Public Release: 24-Sep-2007
Influence of drug companies on medical literature

From a systematic review of data from 24 studies, Michael Allan and colleagues conclude that doctors often underestimate the price of expensive drugs and overestimate the price of those that are inexpensive.

How much of the medical literature is shaped behind the scenes by drug companies?

Drug companies control or shape multiple steps in the research, analysis, writing, and publication of a large proportion of the medical literature, and they do so behind the scenes, according to a policy paper in this week's PLoS Medicine.
The paper's author, Sergio Sismondo (Queen's University, Kingston, Canada), who is an expert in the philosophy of science, calls this phenomenon "ghost management."

Such articles are "ghostly" says Dr Sismondo, "because signs of their actual production are largely invisible--academic authors whose names appear at the tops of ghost-managed articles give corporate research a veneer of independence and credibility."
Drug companies hire medical education and communication companies (MECCs) to help produce and place company-funded articles in medical journals, says Dr Sismondo.

These articles are "managed," he says, because those MECCs "shape the eventual message conveyed by the article or by a suite of articles."
Dr Sismondo looks at one specific example--the published medical literature on the antidepressant drug sertraline. His analysis suggests that between 18% and 40% of the literature on this drug published between 1998 and 2000 was ghost managed by a single MECC acting on behalf of the drug's manufacturer.
Ghost managed studies, says the author, "affect medical opinion, practice and ultimately, patients," says Dr. Sismondo. "I suspect that most researchers - even those participating in the system - don't have a good sense of the extent to which this happens."

Citation: Sismondo S (2007) Ghost management: How much of the medical literature is shaped behind the scenes by the pharmaceutical industry" PLoS Med 4(9): e286.

Everything published by PLoS Medicine is Open Access: freely available for anyone to read, download, redistribute and otherwise use, as long as the authorship is properly attributed.

About PLoS Medicine PLoS Medicine is an open access, freely available international medical journal. It publishes original research that enhances our understanding of human health and disease, together with commentary and analysis of important global health issues. For more information, visit http://www.plosmedicine.org

About the Public Library of ScienceThe Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a non-profit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource. For more information, visit http://www.plos.org

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